It's a childhood dream come true: take eight wickedly fast and capable cars to a racetrack and drive them until you can decide which one is best. The only problem, for me at least, was that I'd never driven this particular racetrack before, and I had no desire to learn it behind the wheel of a $250,000 Ferrari that laps the Fiorano road course faster than the mythical Enzo supercar. Particularly not with twenty of my friends and co-workers watching. So I asked R&T's Editor-in-Chief Larry Webster if I could show up to NCM Motorsports Park before everyone else and, you know, practice a bit. He agreed, but told me that he didn't want me putting extra miles on the PCOTY candidates.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Not a problem. All I needed was a "trainer". Sort of like the T-38 Talon that the Air Force uses to train its fighter pilots before they step into the cockpit of an F-22. Luckily for me, I had just such a vehicle: my 2004 Boxster S "550 Spyder Edition". I've owned it for nearly twelve years now and I've put just over fifty thousand miles on it, much of that on racetracks around the country. With just 264 horsepower and a chassis that has become legendary for balance, tossability, and precise feedback, the Boxster would be a perfect way to learn NCM's Full Course.

There was only one problem: the capabilities of the Boxster were far below those of the eight PCOTY contenders. Couldn't I do something to bridge the gap a bit between the state of the performance-car art back in 2004 and modern-day monsters like the 526-horsepower Shelby GT350R, without making any permanent changes to my old Porsche?

Any club racer knows that tires and brakes make nearly as much difference to a laptime as horsepower, so I decided to upgrade my running gear a bit. When my Boxster was delivered in 2004, it came with Michelin Pilot Sport tires, sized at 225mm width in front and 255mm width in the rear. I wanted something that was much closer to an "R-compound" race tire while still being viable for the 710-mile round trip I'd be making to NCM on the street.

So I gave Falken a call and asked to try out a set of the Azenis RT615-K track tires. They're the rubber of choice in wheel-to-wheel racing and autocross events that specify a 200 treadwear rating. I expected that they would be at least as sticky as the tires fitted to most of our PCOTY contenders, and they're priced very fairly given that they're made in Japan.

I knew from experience that my Boxster could handle a little more tire width than it got from the factory, so I specified 235 width in the front and 275 in the back. Compared to the Porsche Cayman R that was my Boxster's closest relative in the PCOTY field, it was still a bit narrow --- the Cayman has 245-width fronts and 295-width rears --- but I hoped the Falken's progressive response at the limit might help me get more out of the car that would be possible otherwise.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

When the RT-615ks arrived, I mounted them on a set of OEM Porsche Boxster wheels which I then sprayed with brown Rust-Oleum to get the modern dark-wheel aesthetic. Total cost of that was $12.58 and it was money well spent. Next, I ordered a set of Hawk DTC-60 brake pads and Stoptech high-temperature brake fluid. The Hawks were a secret weapon of sorts; they aren't meant for daily use and you shouldn't use them on the street because they are loud as hell and they don't work at all when they are cold. The Stoptech fluid, on the other hand, should be fine for any application where you flush the brakes once a year or so.

On the drive to NCM, the Falkens were loud but very grippy when I railed them around an on-ramp or two. The Hawk pads, on the other hand, were sheer misery. Every stop was accompanied by a massive EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK as the racing-oriented friction material slid along my steel rotors. People in pickup trucks yelled at me. "HEY MAN YOUR BRAKES ARE MESSED UP!"

"NO!" I responded. "IT'S FOR A RACETRACK!" This made no sense to them.

When I arrived at Bowling Green, KY, the next day, the temperature was in the low nineties and the track was shimmering with the heat. Throughout my first few sessions, while I sweated in my helmet and soaked the palms of my gloves with the misery of it, the Boxster would periodically spit coolant out of its fill tube onto the inside of my trunk lid like some sort of annoyed llama.

Slowly, methodically, I worked on learning the track, soliciting advice from drivers who knew it well and trying to apply that advice one frustrating corner at a time. I knew that for the actual PCOTY testing we'd be limiting each car to just two or three consecutive laps at a time, which is a common practice when testing bone-stock street cars on a hot day, but I let the Boxster hang out for ten or fifteen laps per session, deliberately forcing the Falkens to overheat and slide so I'd become proficient in recovering slides if one happened while driving the faster contenders.

After fifty or so laps of NCM, I finally hopped into our PCOTY test vehicles and started working through the eight-car rotation, periodically returning to the Boxster to cleanse my palate, as it were. I also lent my little roadster out to some of the other R&T editors to get their opinion. Without exception, they were charmed by the available grip and pleased with a brake pedal that stayed firm long after most of our test vehicle had succumbed to the heat.

"There's a lot of the play in the steering," Executive Editor Joe DeMatio noted. I had to remind him that it was old-fashioned hydraulic assist. "Very light front end," Editor-at-large Sam Smith complained, "you really have to take your time with it entering a turn. Feels truly mid-engined in the way that the modern Cayman doesn't. But a real joy to drive." Nobody was in a hurry to get out of the car.

At the end of the day, with well over one hundred and twenty laps of NCM under its belt, the Boxster had very little wear on the Falkens and the brakes didn't require bleeding. We could have done five more days like that, I think --- and we could have driven back and forth to each of them.

You can buy an old Boxster "S" like mine for twelve grand if you aren't too picky about mileage and cosmetics. For three thousand dollars, you can toss on the Falkens, a set of Hawk DTC-60s or the equally good Pagid "Orange" race pads, and put the car through a full servicing prior to its first trackday in your hands. Of course, you won't match the laptimes set by our PCOTY contenders, although the Boxster wasn't too far off from some of the heavier, more powerful vehicles thanks to its grip and novice-friendly balance in the two high-speed right-handers that represent the primary challenges at NCM.

I asked my fellow editors: If we'd included my old Boxster in PCOTY, could it have won? The universal answer: Hell no. Time marches on and if it's nice to have 264 horsepower, it's even nicer to have twice that much. Bur we're not sure it would have finished in last place, either. And it's the only car we drove that day that you can get for the price of a year-old Hyundai Elantra, making it a reasonable way to drive home from my childhood dream back into my adult reality.